By Struan Stevenson Conflagration engulfs the Middle East, with the Israel-Hamas war having gone on for more than a year now, and many Israeli hostages are still being held in deplorable conditions by Hamas terrorists. In Northern Israel, constant missile and rocket attacks by Hezbollah led to the mass evacuation of more than 70,000 Israelis from their homes in 2024 and to the inevitable military retaliation by the Israel Defense Forces, as they crossed the border into Southern Lebanon. Israeli missiles are raining down on key Hezbollah targets in Beirut. The assassination of Hezbollah’s terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, a seismic event, shattered his close friend and ally Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader and Hezbollah’s main sponsor. Nasrallah’s successor, Hashem Saffieddine, was also killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut within hours of being nominated for the Hezbollah leadership role and before the funeral of his predecessor had even taken place. Es...
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Persistent Iranian Protests Are a Warning to a Failing Regime
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By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh
Iranian citizens from all walks of life have been protesting for more than a week over the additional hardships imposed on them by the regime through its arbitrary removal of food subsidies. At least half the population rely on these subsidies.
The protests are becoming increasingly political while authorities are taking desperate measures to suppress them.
Ordinary Iranians are appealing to the international community for assistance in preventing a dramatic rise in the rate of fatalities resulting from the crackdown. A prominent figure in the opposition, Maryam Rajavi, echoed that sentiment on Monday, noting that support from the US and its allies would greatly assist the Iranian people in their efforts to “free Iran, the Middle East, and the world [from] the evil of the nuclear mullahs.” Mrs. Rajavi is the President-elect of the largest opposition movement, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). She urged the United Nations to act upon Chapter 7, Article 41 of its charter to impose greater economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation on the Iranian regime. She called for urgent accountability for the regime’s massacre of30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988, as well as for their violent crackdown on uprisings in November 2019, which left 1,500 people dead.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Mrs. Rajavi at Ashraf 3 in Albania, the headquarters of the main constituent of the NCRI, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a 57-year-old organization that enjoys expanding support inside Iran. “The regime in Tehran went to the extreme to massacre 30,000 political prisoners,” Pompeo said while criticizing the US government for its failure to provide substantial political support to the Iranian Resistance. He went on add that the overwhelming majority of those prisoners were supporters of the MEK, and that the regime’s nearly single-minded focus on the group constitutes a persistent threat of attack which “extends far beyond Iran’s borders, with the regime having waged terror plots in Europe and the US against the leaders of this movement.”
But Pompeo also emphasized that these efforts reflect the Iranian regime’s severe anxiety over the “tremendous capabilities” of the NCRIand MEK. He stressed that it is “a necessity” for the current government and any future US administration to “reach out to the Iranian Resistance” to coordinate a realistic strategy.
By further expanding economic sanctions and other pressures on the regime, the US could very well provide the Iranian people with precisely the added push they need in order to realize a goal of regime change that has been quite explicit in a number of unprecedented public protests since the end of 2017. Such actions will warn the regime that it will be held accountable for its human rights violations.
Up to this point, the regime’s hold on power has largely depended upon a strong sense of impunity that has grown out of its avoidance of consequences for incidents like the 1988 massacre. The international community’s failure in this regard was acknowledged by several UN human rights experts last year when they wrote an open letter about the former crime against humanity and noted that no relevant bodies had followed up on a December 1988 resolution which recognized that year’s increase in politically-motivated killings.
“The failure of these bodies to act had a devastating impact on the survivors and families as well as on the general situation of human rights in Iran,” the letter noted before articulating the international community’s responsibility to compensate for its prior failing. The US can lead the way in that endeavor.
Iran’s bright future has been outlined by Mrs. Rajavi in a ten-point plan to be implemented if and when she assumes the role of transitional president.
The plan calls for a secular republic that guarantees freedom of speech and assembly, individual freedoms, gender equality, and a non-nuclear Iran, among other features.The oppositional group has shown it has staying power thanks to its deep social roots. Its Resistance Units within Iran have destroyed images of the clerical regime’s leadership on the streets, posting Rajavi’s image in their stead, and broadcasting public messages that call for democracy and freedom.
The broad acceptance of this messaging is a vital reminder of the fact that Iran is most likely to follow a clear political course in the wake of the mullahs’ overthrow. Iran has a better future ahead of itself. As Mike Pompeo said on Monday, “In the end the Iranian people will have a secular, democratic, non-nuclear Republic.”
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman, and president of the International American Council. He serves on the boards of the Harvard International Review, the Harvard International Relations Council, and the US-Middle East Chamber for Commerce and Business. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh
Written by Mahmoud Hakamian Two-minute read On Sunday morning, April 14, the Iranian regime launched an unprecedented attack against Israel, escalating tensions in the Middle East. Despite military experts’ assessments that the attack failed, it underscores Iran’s role as a focal point of regional conflict. The October 7th attack sent shockwaves globally. Despite ample evidence implicating the Iranian regime, Western governments dismissed Tehran’s involvement, adhering to a flawed appeasement policy toward the primary state sponsor of terrorism. They disregarded explicit statements from Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commanders boasting about their direct role in the attack. For decades, the Iranian Resistance has urged the international community to adopt a resolute stance against the Iranian regime’s aggression and terrorism. Despite persistent calls, the failed appeasement policy of the West allowed Tehran to escalate its belligerent activities, including ...
By DR. MAJID RAFIZADEH President Donald Trump will make a decision on whether the US will leave or stick with the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, by May 12. It has been almost three years since the nuclear accord was reached between the Islamic Republic and the UN Security Council’s five permanent members — Russia, the UK, China, France, and the US — plus Germany (the P5+1). Since the JCPOA’s implementation day on Jan. 16, 2016, the Iranian regime has been receiving various benefits that can be divided into four categories. Based on the terms of the JCPOA, four rounds of the United Nations Security Council’s economic sanctions against Tehran were lifted immediately. The regime also received unilateral sanctions relief from individual countries in exchange for halting its nuclear activities and dismantling some sections of its nuclear program. For instanc...
Link to call signing: https://www.change.org/p/un-secretary-general-call-for-justice-for-the-1988-iran-massacre Let's move our hands to change our world In the age of consciousness, and in the 21st century, brutality and barbarism must be stopped, this is not worthy of humanity. At the first step, you should be the center of this cruelty and the godfather of crime and murder, terrorism and fundamentalism that nobody is part of Iran's terrorist government. The fact is that the killing and execution of political and conscientious prisoners in public or in prisons is secretly in its astronomical dimensions on the coin of killing innocent people abroad by this regime. The issuance of terrorism and the support of fundamentalist and terrorist groups in this regime is institutionalized and is part of the constitution. The crimes committed by perpetrators and groups affiliated with this corrupt and expansionist state in Syria and Lebanon and Iraq ...
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